Tracking Suspects Who Never Thought Anyone Would Look
Investigators collected thousands of text messages to reconstruct an alleged plot to murder Berta Cáceres.
Members of the Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras hold posters with an image of slain indigenous leader and environmental activist Berta Cáceres in Tegucigalpa on Oct. 10, 2019.
Photographer: Orlando Sierra/AFP via Getty Images
After activist Berta Cáceres was killed at her home in Honduras, her family’s frustration with the nation’s justice system grew with each passing week. They alleged that Desarrollos Energéticos, or DESA—a hydroelectric company that Berta had protested against—was somehow behind the murder. And they believed that Honduran authorities weren’t interested in looking too deeply into those suspicions.
So months after the 2016 crime, the family helped assemble a team of international experts—lawyers and prosecutors who had worked on high-profile human rights cases around the world—to dig into the evidence.